Official Logline and Synopsis for Argento’s ‘Giallo’

This evening we received the official logline and long synopsis for Dario Argento’s latest, Giallo, which completed principal photography this past June. Starring Elsa Pataky, Adrien Brody and Emmanuelle Seigner, and written by Sean Keller and Jim Agnew, the film begins in Italy, an American woman fears her sister may have been kidnapped. Inspector Enzo Lavia fears it’s worse. They team up to rescue her from a sadistic killer known only as Yellow. Read on for a long synopsis.YELLOW chooses his victims based on their beauty, because he himself is not beautiful. Scorned and rejected in the orphanage where he was raised as a child, he now hunts beautiful women to torture and to kill.

He keeps them alive, mentally and physically abusing them, until he grows bored. Then, he kills them and discards their body. He’s efficient, and always has his next victim ready to torture. And he’s clever, only going after tourists, women who won’t find an advocate in the police department.

His latest victim is an Asian exchange student. After her, he has CELINE (Elsa Pataky), a gorgeous fashion model.

LINDA (Emmanuelle Seigner) is a smart, attractive flight attendant, in Torino to spend time with Celine, her sister. When Celine doesn’t arrive for their planned meeting, she takes her concern to the local police. But they don’t want to be bothered with her, sending her instead to the basement to deal with INSPECTOR ENZO LAVIA (Adrien Brody), an eccentric detective who doesn’t fit in with the department. The details of the case remind him of a strange killer he’s been hunting. Yellow.

They team up to find her, their quest aided by the tragic death of the Asian foreign exchange student. Enzo has some pretty wild theories about the killer, theories that are correct. One of these theories leads him to believe that Celine is next. Yellow tortures Celine, but finds that she’s tougher than many of his victims. She fights back. As the detective and Linda close in, Celine is running out of time.

Enzo deduces that the killer must have hepatitis, and they go to a hospital that treats the disease. As they try to get the doctor to release confidential information, Enzo realizes that Yellow is in the hospital! A chase ensues, but Yellow gets away.

But now he’s seen Linda, and he knows that to keep feeding his lust for blood, he must kill her as well. Both sisters are in jeopardy, and the clock is ticking.

“Giallo” updates great Giallo horror film of Dario Argento, directed by the creator of the genre, that also calls to mind the classic serial killer films such as “Silence of the Lambs” and “Seven”. Featuring a hero and a heroine facing down pure evil, “Giallo” is a new classic by a master of suspense.